


hallucinate

by wind girl (amixxhan)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Loads of them, M/M, Spoilers for Endgame, TW: Hallucinations, also akiras not really dead goro just think he is, erm gore warning?, im tired im tagging everything else tomorrow, miscommunication is an actual problem, quotes from the game, tw: a bit of self hate bc its goro akechi what did y'all expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 15:58:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11234310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amixxhan/pseuds/wind%20girl
Summary: “Fact: Kurusu Akira was dead. Killed by Akechi’s own gun.Fact: Kurusu Akira was standing right in front of him, bullet hole on his forehead. Bright red blood flowed steady and swift from the wound.One of those was false, and he was sure it was the second one.post casino-palace, in which goro akechi hallucinates the boy he's killed.





	hallucinate

Fact: Kurusu Akira was dead. Killed by Akechi’s own gun.

Fact: Kurusu Akira was standing right in front of him, bullet hole on his forehead. Bright red blood flowed steady and swift from the wound.

One of those was false, and he was sure it was the second one.

Akira’s hand hovered over his cheek, “You killed me,” he says, “you _killed_ me.”

Akechi can only nod. “I know,” he replies, “I can’t—“

“You can’t disobey daddy?”

When he looks at the dead boy again, there’s a malicious Chesire-cat grin on his face— he laughs, steadily, maliciously even. Akechi can only gulp in fear, one step at a time, backing away from the apparition.

“You can’t escape me now Goro—“ The grin got even wider, chuckle lower and more drawn out. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Kurusu—“

When he raises his eyes to meet his, the phantom thief is gone.

* * *

 

He first appears when he visits Le Blanc again, a few days after the Casino heist— tapping on the countertop, raised eyebrow at his coffee.

“Hello Akechi,” Akira says, voice a little soft, a little bold. Some things he had always been, even before Akechi joined the thieves.

When Akechi looks up, he is greeted with a bloodstained face, bullet hole taunting him. He’s in his stupid day clothes with an apron on, blood staining most of it.

“You’re dead,” he says. “I _killed_ you.”

“But your conscience says otherwise,” the thief adds. “If I were truly dead to you, I won’t be here.”

He almost drops his coffee cup, good thing Boss wasn’t watching. He grips the handle tighter, and finishes the rest of the bitter substance in one long gulp. He wipes his face clean and pays what’s due before leaving without a word.

Sacrificing good coffee was worth it if _his_ face would not haunt him anymore.

(Coffee or not, Akira’s stupid-ass face is always in his mind, blank slate grey boring into ruby red.)

* * *

 

He tried distracting himself often. If he doesn’t, gray eyes would find him, a porcelain complexion tainted with crimson—

Akechi shakes his head at the thought of _him_.

“Did you miss me,” his voice says in his mind, when he turns to his right, Akira is there. Blood still flowing down, down, down, from the wound. “Do you miss me Goro?”

“Kurusu—“ he squeaks out, “You’re dead.”

“It’s fitting eh, the Moriarty to your Holmes. But the difference is, Holmes was actually a great detective,” he muses, inching closer and closer until their noses were touching. “A Holmes without a Watson is suicide, Akechi. Do you know that? But ah, you don’t consider me Moriarty, do you?”

The thief is gone the moment he opens his mouth to reply.

(He didn’t need a _Watson_ , friendships were not his forte. He realizes later on, Akira was right, Akira isn’t his Moriarty, _Akira’s his personal Irene Adler_.)

* * *

 

“You’re dead,” Akechi repeats. Akira stands in front of him, appearance unchanged from the moment Akechi shot him between his eyes.

“Yet I am here” he replies, “Still not done with me?”

He balls his hands into fists, glares with the ferocity of a lion. “You’re dead. It means I’m _better_ than you. Than _all_ of you.”

He slams his fist down the table, and the boy merely smirks. “That’s where _you_ are wrong Akechi.”

Akira starts laughing again, a dark baritone that resounds in Akechi’s nightmares. There’s suddenly a knife in his hands, twirling between his fingers.

“You’re not real,” he deadpans.

“Maybe I’m not, but you’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”

Akira’s behind him now, pointing an equally unreal knife at his throat.

“You’re not real,” he repeats with more conviction, “You’re dead.”

The hairs on his neck stand up, goosebumps litter his fair skin and when he turns to the dead man in front of him, the wound is still there.

 _“I am better than you_ ,” Akechi reaffirms to himself, “ _I am better than you, Kurusu Akira. I am better than all of the Phantom Thieves combined!_ ”

“That’s just _precious_. Doing all of this to prove yourself to your scum-bag of a father?” Akira chuckles, murmurs full of mirth. “I committed larceny, you committed _murder_. Both are wrong, yes, but who do you think is morally better?”

“ _Shut up shut up shut up!_ ” he screams at the boy, grabbing him by his lapels, skewing his glasses and mussing up his turtleneck, “ _You are filth, you are garbage, you are the **scum** of the Earth!”_

“Ah, if I am scum Goro Akechi, then what are _you_?” Akira asks, setting down the knife at last. Akechi unhands him in surprise.

(Akechi freezes solid for the next minute.)

* * *

 

 _He can’t get the blood out of his gloves_. His gloves are red, extremely so, and no amount of laundering can get it out.

“Hm, Akechi?” Sae asks, “What’s wrong?”

He merely stares at the bloodstained fabric.

“Akechi?” Sae repeats.

(He doesn’t answer.)

* * *

 

(He takes a month off from his job and school and curls up underneath the covers. Damn everything.)

* * *

 

“Do you think you can hide from me?” Akira asks him one day, “I am part of you now,” he claims.

“ _Yes_. Go away.”

“What if I don’t want to Akechi?” Akira replies, Akechi can feel his weight on the side of the bed, and he curls up into a ball underneath the covers.

“ _Get lost._ ”

The dead thief merely chuckles in delight. “Ah, you can’t get rid of me _detective prince_ ,” he says in a mocking, scathing tone. “You just _can’t_.”

(And he really can’t, he tried. He’d tried everything.)

* * *

 

Their noses were touching and he was a cold blur.

“You’re not real,” Akechi repeats for what seems to be the millionth time, “You’re rotting in a mortuary.”

“But I am,” Akira counters, he places a cold hand on Akechi’s cheek. “See?”

The touch was cold, but it was there. He’s definitely crazy.

“Akira…?”

The thief disappears without another word.

(And whether he admits it or not, he’s sad that Akira did.)

* * *

 

(Sometimes, if he’s lucky, Akira would indulge him. Kisses and gentle touches, maybe even a good fuck, that kind of bullshit he wanted. It would be perfect except for the fact that he was dead, and that there’s a bullet hole on his forehead.)

* * *

 

“Long time no see,” he says. The Phantom Thieves, _those damned Phantom Thieves_ were trampling on his plan again.

His eyes wander, and ruby red faces slate gray. So he _was_ alive.

“You…!?” Ryuji mutters.

He can vaguely hear Futaba saying, “What’s he doing here…!?”

He turns to Akira, “Hmph… I’m impressed that you managed to deceive me. It seems that I underestimated your abilities. You truly are interesting… Quiet, yet possessing the courage and determination to take action.”

(Akira looks at him with a damn smirk that makes him want to crush his skull into fine powder.)

“Under different circumstances, we could’ve been great rivals… or perhaps even friends.”

“We’re already rivals,” he mutters.

He laughs, mirthless and melancholy, “How wonderful! You don’t allow yourself to be enslaved by such things as human relations or past selves.”

There’s a beat before he continues. “And so, your heart is always free. The complete opposite of mine. To be honest, I’m envious… I wonder why we couldn’t have met a few years earlier Kurusu.”

(He feels a surge of power, and it was gone as soon as it came.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> i should be sleeping but have this, unbetaed and unedited bc i wrote this in ninety minutes. please scream with me on amiixhan, my tumblr. better yet, my main tumblr girl-of-angst.
> 
> pls don't kill me.
> 
> i was going to include smut but i cHICKENED OUT OK


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